Manual for Streets 2; Wider Application of the Principles

Abstract

This paper describes how it has been 3 years since the Department for Transport published for streets (MfS), which is the revolutionary guideline that signaled the end of an era of car-dominated street design. The guideline has had a significant impact on professional thinking towards the better design of streets and raising awareness across the professions of the need to give greater priority to design quality and the needs of pedestrians and cyclists. Scotland’s own Designing Streets builds on the concepts and principles explored in MfS but takes this further, giving these principles clear policy status. However, the key focus of MfS and Designing Streets is towards residential development and while they encourage many of the principles to be more broadly applied, it has become evident that the profession is seeking further guidance on how to extrapolate the principles to other types of street and fall back upon when challenged about their decisions. In response to these concerns the Institution of Highways and Transportation supported by the Department for Transport, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the County Surveyors Society has commissioned a contractor to lead the study for the design of highways that sit between residential streets, covered by MfS and interurban roads, covered by the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. The contractor will look at the need to balance the requirements of a wide cross-section of road users; from pedestrians to lorry drivers to cyclists to those living and running businesses along the routes. This paper will examine the scope of the study and the initial findings of additional research. It will also highlight the specific challenges and opportunities for Scotland following the launch of Designing Streets.